When I published my previous post, wordpress warned me that this was the 299th post of my blog. 299? – I thought – F*#$%, the post 300 has to be special. No trend alert, fashionary, or a video that I think is worth sharing. This would have to be one of those posts with text, a personal and relevant post. (Without realizing it, I was committing my first error regarding the post 300: (I was exaggerating its importance.) The problem here is that I had no idea what to write about. It seemed to me that a good strategy would be to understand what had been my 200th post and then the post number 100… as if, suddenly, the hundred was an exceptional milestone, something to mark. Post 200: “Christmas : the last fds! | Xmas : Final weekend!” A post on this last weekend before Christmas, which I love! And a list of what these days would be like. Post 100 : GUIDE NY | NY CITY GUIDE NY guide, a post that began, not as a post, but as number of tips for Andreia who was visiting NY soon, but that gave me so much pleasure that I decided to write as a post and assume a new category on this blog – my city guides. Therefore, two totally different posts without any possibility of giving me any hint about the contents of post 300. I wrote down some ideas, but none of them seemed interesting enough, or particularly important, to establish the field of a post. So I did what, lately I’ve been doing. I packed this concern/ task/ idea in the back of my head and thought, that something would occurr to me in the coming days. It was Friday, April 11, and this matter was waiting for an inspiration that would appear at any moment… Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and … N O T H I N G ! Incidentally, what was the surprise? With a creative profession as mine, I have an obligation to know that the secret to getting results really is 90 % work and 10 % inspiration. And I realized that my post would have to be about this very thing, procrastination, a word that seems to have entered the vocabulary of everyone and that means “leave it for later”, “to delay” . Procrastinating is using all the excuses, all the feeds of blogs that you follow, all facebook status updates of people you haven’t spoke with in years, all instagram photos of people you do not know, all the youtube videos, ted talks, twitter, etc, etc, etc, not to do what you really have to do: that drawing that should be ready by now, that cover letter that has to be delivered tomorrow, the curriculum that is screaming for an update, that business plan that needs to get out of your head and on to paper, etc, etc, etc. . Procrastinating is what happened to me with this post 300 . Procrastinating has been a common thing in my life in recent months. In fact , procrastination is such intense by now that I question myself if I’m suffering from a case of acute procrastination or a case of FOMO (fear of missing out), since this delay, in my case, is usually coated with an absurd need to check what is happening in social media. But I think I can say with some certainty that it is procrastination and that the symptoms of FOMO are just the way my brain chose to put into practice an almost chronic procrastination. Laziness, some might say. Not true! Procrastinating has nothing to do with laziness, the psychological reasons that are inherent in it are quite complex and saying that procrastinating is laziness is an unacceptable simplification. “Procrastination can be a persistent and debilitating disorder in some people , causing significant psychological dysfunction and ineptitude” says wikipédia. “Procrastination has ruined many lives” says this article , and , if so , I have to place order on it !

How ? 1 : Make lists ! Today , on the way to work, had been making a list of tasks that have to meet in the coming days . From the simplest to the most complex , because that list include simple tasks can help achieve a sense of accomplishment that functions as a vitamin that helps to achieve more and more tasks . 2 : Create priorities Not everything has the same urgency or importance . Rate and realize what is most important . 3 : Subdivide the more complex tasks . Mini generating tasks makes the big task in simpler , more accessible , and thus easier to enforce appears . 4 : Establish deadlines Impose deadlines are halfway to avoid postponing tasks . 5 : Do not overdo it ! Do not blow out of proportion tasks ! After all , did not write the post 300 in less than an semanana , is not the end of the world !